Numerical Investigations of Flow Around a Wire-wrapped Rotating Cylinder

摘要

Numerical investigations of flow past rotating circular cylinders with and without wires wrapped on the surface of the cylinder were studied using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The flow characteristics such as flow separation, shedding of the primary and secondary vortices, and drag coefficients were investigated. The software STAR CCM+ from Siemens PLM was used in all investigations. Three-dimensional Unsteady Reynolds Average Navier Stokes (URANS) equations were utilized. The free stream mean velocity was constant at 10 m/sec, which corresponded to an approximate Reynolds number based on cylinder's diameter of 32,000. The results are presented for cylinders with and without wires at varying rotation rates alpha of 0, 0.5, and 1. This is represented by alpha, the ratio of the tangential velocity at the cylinder to that of the free stream velocity of the flow. As the rotation rate increased from 0 to 1, the drag coefficient for the smooth rotating cylinder reduced, while the drag coefficient for the wire-wrapped cylinder increased. The wire-wrapped cylinder produced significantly higher lift when compared with the corresponding value for the smooth cylinder. Increasing the rotation rate increases the lift and lift to drag ratio.